


A Token of Affection

by Curtez



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Happy Ending, Idiots in Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 17:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30092613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curtez/pseuds/Curtez
Summary: "Hey you're not exactly a walk on the Park either!" Keith pointed out, leaning on one arm so that he could face Lance without turning his head. "For your information, my temper was way better before your babbling ass came along.""This is the best apology I have ever heard." Lance teased, still smiling.Keith and Lance get to escape from reality for a moment, coming to terms with their feelings for each other. (Idiots in love)
Relationships: Keith & Lance (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 83





	A Token of Affection

"I was TRYING to save them! I was doing whatever I could to get _everyone_ out of there! Why are you so mad about this?!" 

Lance shouted, face flustered with anger. The paladins were all in the main hall, meeting after having taken a shower and put on some clean casual clothes. They had just come back from a pretty tough fight, and had lost two of the prisoners they had tried to rescue. Being soldiers, they had started to get used to casualties; but none of them wanted to. 

Allura and Coran had already called it a night, and the post-battle exhaustion was on everyone's faces and body language, except for the two kids who were having a very awake and very loud argument in the center of the room. 

"It was the team's decision to pull back, Lance! To stop attacking and leave with what we had! Continuing to shoot drew out a whole new fleet of drones that we could have failed to defend ourselves against!" - Keith reprehended. 

"Yeah! But I fought them! And I gave those hostages their best chance to escape, something none of you seemed to be willing to do!" 

"Ok, now you're stepping outta line!" Pidge objected, with a finger close to their face and accusingly pointed at Lance. Their face was lit up with offense. "What we did was a calculated withdrawn based on the enemy's fire power and the remaining percentage of our lions' defence systems! If we thought there was any chance we could have stayed and rescued them, we would have kept fighting! I would have kept fighting."

They leaned back against the couch and looked down, feeling drained. That threw Lance off a bit - he knew how pidge felt about rescuing prisoners, and what he'd said might have been unfair - but he was still certain he had done the right thing on the battlefield.

He looked at Keith, who was staring back at him and gesturing energetically at pidge with raised eyebrows as if to say "see, dumbass? I'm right". 

"Fighting that fleet was not your decision to make. It not only compromised the mission, you could have gotten yourself killed!" Keith argued, his voice getting higher and more frustrated by the sentence. 

"Ha." Lance scoffed, rubbing the back of his neck. He did look awfully tired. "If I didn't think you would put up 'paladin wanted' signs before my corpse got cold, I would say you were actually worried about me." he mocked, trying to maintain eye contact and a cocky expression, but soon looked away as he felt his face burning. 

"We all had a direct order from Shiro to pull back!" Keith continued, trying to ignore what Lance had just said. "How hard could it have been to just follow it?!" 

"Oh! You wanna talk about following orders now, do ya, Mr too-cool-for-school mcbadboy-" 

Hunk snorted in the background, but Keith wasn't in the mood for this. Why couldn't Lance just admit he'd made a mistake? "GOD, Lance, can't you take /anything/ seriously?!" 

" _I was doing what I thought was right._ You honestly think I don't understand how serious that mission was?! We all saw what happened out there, Keith; people died!"

**"If you weren't such a stubborn fuck up, they wouldn't have!"**

Keith regretted saying it the second he closed his mouth, like dropping a glass and instantly wanting to go back that fraction of a second to avoid the irreparable shatter. Lance was staring at him with an incredulous, almost disgusted look. The worst part? He didn't think Keith was all wrong. If Lance had pulled back, the Galra wouldn't have sent a new fleet, and the shot that blew up the cells may not have been taken. The prisoners, even if in danger, could still be alive. 

"Keith!" Shiro reprehended sharply, taking a step forward. But the kid, shocked by his own words, didn't take his eyes off of Lance. Keith had started to open his mouth when Lance scoffed, taking steps back. 

"I'm glad you got to get that out of your chest." he muttered, turning away and leaving the hall. Keith wanted to shout him to wait, but the words couldn't find their way out of his mouth.

He was just about to follow Lance into the hallway when an arm as steady as a brunch stopped him where he stood. 

"You've done enough." Hunk snarled. Keith saw for the first time that, as kind and sweet as hunk was, he could look very scary when he wanted to. The fact that he was almost a whole head taller than Keith and much _much_ buffer sure helped; but it was the look on his face that did it. It said "do anything else to hurt him and I will snap you like a twig." 

Hunk removed his hand and turned to look briefly at the others as he walked out of the room. "I'm gonna go talk to him." 

Keith turned to look at Shiro, who had his arms crossed and was gazing tiredly at some point on the ground ahead. Keith's heart crumpled even smaller. 

"Shiro, I-" 

"We'll talk on the morning. Get some sleep." He then walked out of the room like the two before him, leaving only Keith and pidge on the great hall that was now filled with a strange, heavy silence, in comparison to the heated argument it had just witnessed a few moments ago. 

Pidge got up from the couch's arm rest where they had been sitting on and looked at Keith, painfully disappointed. 

"What the hell, man." 

"Pidge, I- I didn't mean what I just said. I know there wasn't anything we could have done to save the prisoners. I don't even know why I said that thing to Lance, I was just so _angry_ with him - I wish I could take it back."

Keith dropped defeated on the chair behind him, sighing deeply and leaning forward to rest his forehead on his hands. He pictured Lance in another room, offended to the core, yelling horrible things about him to hunk. If he didn't hate Keith before, he sure as hell does now. 

"Fuck. Of course I don't think those people died because of him." 

" _We_ know that; Lance might not be so sure. Look, I know you're not an asshole. You're just acting like one. So knock it off, let him sleep on it, then apologize. You're not the only one who's tired, Keith." They said as they rested their glasses on top of their head to rub their eyes. "I'm going to bed, you should too." 

"Yeah." Keith sighed, relieved that at least one person in the team had looked him in the eye and listened. "Yeah, I will. Thanks." 

"My pleasure. Dumbass."

\----------- 

"Who the hell does he think he is? He's certainly not the boss of me! Allura kinda is. Shiro too. And neither of them was yelling at me for doing my freaking job!" Lance shouted, walking in circles in one of castle's glass domes. Its transparent roof and walls formed the shape of half an enormous sphere, and it had a pretty neat view of the great outer space; not that Lance was in the mood for stargazing. 

"You shouldn't listen to him, dude. He was clearly just shooting words out of his mouth without bothering to pass them through his brain." Hunk said, trying to reason with Lance to calm him down. "We were all there, we saw what happened; of course the explosion wasn't your fault!" 

Lance flinched at the last sentence and, when he didn't say anything, hunk's eyes widened and he stepped closer to hold Lance by the shoulders. 

"No no no no no no. Lance!" He called, trying to meet his eyes, but Lance was doing a pretty good job avoiding that. "/It wasn't your fault/. It was the galra's and theirs alone, do you hear me?" 

"But if I hadn't kept attacking-" 

" _They would still be dead_. I know. It sucks. The world is a crappy place where good people die and sometimes there's just nothing you can do to stop it. Those prisoners were on death row, Lance. This was one of those times." 

Lance nodded as his eyes began to water and hunk pulled him in for a proper hug. 

"You did everything you could." 

"Thanks, buddy." Lance replied, hugging back. 

A hug from hunk is one of those you can really burry yourself in, as warm and safe as can be. Lance often thought about how lucky he was to have such a considerate and affectionate best friend, specially since Lance was as thirsty for attention as it gets. 

"And I know you have a thing for Keith, but that's no reason for you to take everything he says so seriously." Hunk said, pulling back from the hug. 

"I don't do that!" Lance blushed, crossing his arms.

"Lance, last week he said your Power Kick wasn't that great and you kicked half a tower off the castle." 

"He was challenging me!" 

"Sure he was." Hunk replied, then stretched his arms in a yawn. "I'm gonna go be heavenly unconscious for eight hours now. I highly recommend it." 

"Yeah, yeah, I won't be long." 

"G' night, buddy." 

"'Night." 

So hunk headed back to his room and Lance sighed heavily as he sat on the ground, looking at the stars. He knew he'd have a hard time falling asleep right now, so why bother going to bed? He thought back to the battle, the explosion, the return, the fight. He'd run the events of that night about six times in his head when he told himself to shut up, groaning and hiding his face in his hands. Despite his efforts, there were two specific moments that kept flashing through his eye lids; when he saw the cells suddenly burst into flames, and the look on Keith's face when he blamed him for it. 

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block everything out. _It was not his fault._ Keith doesn't really think it was. He doesn't wish Lance weren't here. He doesn't hate him. He doesn't. 

He sighed, opening his eyes and sitting straighter. If he started crying now, he wasn't sure when he'd stop. He tried to distract himself by making up constellations with the stars above, and wondering if aliens had some sort of equivalent to earth's horoscopes. Among the infinite display of glowing spots in the sky, he managed to make up a vague shape of what seemed to be a hybrid between a cat and a dolphin, and thought that would totally be his extra-terrestrial zodiac sign. 

Keith was walking down the hallway, headed to his room, when his eyes caught sight of Lance sitting on the floor of the glass dome. He froze by the entrance, hesitating to walk in or walk past. He debated about following pidge's advice and letting Lance sleep on it before trying to apologize, to avoid reigniting the fight. 

Something in his gut told him to step forward and take a deep breath. 

"Hey." Keith said shyly, and Lance turned his head. He looked very tired, but not angry, which was good - or at least Keith hoped so. "Can I...?" He asked, gesturing at a spot next to Lance. 

The boy nodded shortly, then returned to look at the view. Keith walked into the dome and sat on the cold marble-like ground next to Lance, a few inches away. A couple of minutes were spent in silence, not even their breaths were perceptible, and the universe seamed very still and peaceful from afar. It always does. But they both knew about all the life in the planets above and all the complications brought by the mere existence of organized societies, amplified immeasurably by the universal threat of Zarkon's Empire. 

Keith wasn't exactly big on apologizing. He swallowed hard, trying to send his pride down his throat as well. He learned the hard way that this behavior of his of lashing out on those around him was a vicious cycle, and the sooner he mended things the better. 

Even though the two of them argued constantly, he felt like Lance was the closest person to him in the palace, after Shiro. He had actually started to grow quite fond of Lance, but he didn't plan on letting it show too much; the guy obviously had some kind of feued with him - always picking fights, starting arguments, trying to prove himself better in some way - so Keith guessed hand holding was nowhere in their foreseeable future. Regardless, seeing Lance actually hurt by his words had left Keith with a knot in his chest, and it would take more words to untie it.

"Look, Lance... I'm... I'm sorry. About what I said back there. I didn’t mean any of it." He turned his head to face him, but Lance was looking indifferently at his own hands. "I know the explosion wasn't your fault, there was nothing any of us could have done. I shouldn't have taken it out on you, I was just... tired and frustrated and pissed at everything-" 

"Your normal self, then." Lance smirked, and Keith untensed his shoulders and rose one corner of his lips, relieved at the sight. 

"Yeah. I know I can be a bit of a pain sometimes." 

"Sometimes? That's cute." 

"Hey you're not exactly a walk on the Park either!" Keith pointed out, leaning on one arm so that he could face Lance without turning his head. "For your information, my temper was way better before your babbling ass came along." 

"This is the best apology I have ever heard." Lance teased, still smiling.

"Jesus; I’m trying, okay? If you could just shut your goddamn mouth for one second and let me-" 

"I’m just messing with you, man." he laughed, nudging on Keith's side. "Message received. We're cool." 

"Are you sure?" 

"Yeah. It was a tough day; we all said things we didn't mean." Lance looked down at his intertwined fingers and made a mental note to apologize to pidge in the morning. 

Keith pursed his lips, feeling there was still something unresolved. But Lance had accepted his apology, and he took that as his cue to leave. He sighed, starting to get up - he wanted to make sure they left things on a good note, and he hardly believed it would get any better than this - but Lance grabbed the end of his sleeve.

"Hey, stay a while. It's a nice night - if you can call it a night, considering we are nowhere close to an active star so it's always dark out. Also I don't know about you, but I don't wanna be left alone with my thoughts after what just happened." 

"Oh." Keith said, a bit surprised. He knew they had an unspoken friendship underneath all the arguing, but neither of them had ever voiced anything that even remotely indicated the desire to be in the same room for longer than necessary. "Alright." 

He leaned back and glanced at Lance's face, trying to make out an expression that would help him understand this sudden change of attitude. The tiredness was making him look much calmer than his usual loud and energic self; his eyelids seemed heavy, there were dark circles under his eyes and a bruise on his bottom lip that had ripped from smiling, so there was a tiny trail of blood on the corner of his mouth; Keith held back a strange urge to swipe it with his thumb and returned to look at the stars. 

He gazed particularly at the currently closest planet, a huge pale one that looked a bit like a blueish version the moon, only twenty times bigger. It _was_ a nice night. Lance sighed loudly and laid his back on the ground, with his hands behind his head and his legs crossed. 

"Let's talk about something pleasant." he suggested in a jazzy voice, sounding more like himself. 

Keith scoffed. "Like what?" The past few days had been hell. The casualties from their battles keeps growing and growing, after each planet they manage to free from Zarkon's Empire. And today: the first big fight against a significant Galra fleet in weeks that they had a real shot at winning, and they had lost. Miserably. 

"Well, we're not dead." 

"That's always nice." Keith replied, lying next to Lance. His back ached from the crash, so he flinched at first, but soon managed to relax. 

"Nice? Considering the absurd amount of life threatening shit we put ourselves through on a daily basis, the sole fact that most of us still have all our limbs is a damn miracle! We should be celebrating!" 

"I'll get the party hats." Keith mumbled. He knew Lance wasn't really happy, he knew he was still shaken from everything that had happened earlier; but this was his way to cope, and Keith was going to respect it. 

"If we were back on earth, I'd throw us all a good old beach party. Y'all need to seriously chill, and nothing like the soft sound of waves coming undone on sand in the middle of the night to do the trick. My mother would bake us some empanadas and fry us some buñuelos, and my older sister makes a mean daiquiri if you're down for it. Fun fact: the drinking age in Cuba is sixteen. Emphasis on the _fun_." 

The way Lance was talking about home and his family with such a spark in his eyes made Keith smile without even realizing. Lance was making it all sound like it was actually going to happen in the near future, as if in a couple of weeks they would all be back on earth, with the mission complete and the universe safe. 

"I, of course" he continued, with a hand on his chest and a proud face. "would be offering the evening's entertainment with a wide selection of Taylor Swift songs." 

"You play." Keith said with a touch of disbelief, mentally storing the Taylor swift part for later. 

"The guitar, of course. I'm not just a pretty face and an exquisite pilot-" Keith snorted and Lance punched his shoulder. "- I am a man of many talents. And seriously, the guitar: _huge_ hot people magnet." 

"Why else would you do anything?" Keith asked sarcastically, rolling his eyes. 

Lance agreed vehemently then proceeded to talk about the time he "borrowed" his dad's car to impress this surf instructor and ended up being briefly detained for running over multiple public benches. 

"So your career as an exquisite pilot started sooner than I thought." Keith teased, and Lance stuck out his tongue. "You really miss home, huh?" 

"More than anything." Lance sighed. "But it's probably going to be years before I can step on that beach again, if ever." 

He must have realised he was starting to sound gloomy, cause he quickly cleared his throat and returned to look at the sky, grinning wide. "But hey, how neat is space? Giant floating rocks! Aliens who only sometimes want to blow us up! The void!" 

Keith got up, against his bruised body's wishes, and reached out his hand. 

"Ok, come on. I wanna show you something." 

Lance raised an eyebrow before accepting the hand and being pulled up, then promptly guided out of the glass dome and into the dim hallway. The lights had been set to the usual "middle of the night in earth hours" configuration - very soft and low, just light enough to see where you're going. 

They walked in silence for a short moment, and Lance was glad that Keith was walking ahead and keeping his eyes front, because they hadn't let go of each other's hand and Lance's face was heating up like a stove. He wondered if Keith was aware of the mood implied by their current situation; the boy could be as clueless as a pile of bricks. And, even though Lance found it endearing, it had started to become frustrating. He kept wondering whether or not he was imagining things and there really wasn't anything at all between them, or if he was being too subtle. If _him_. _**Lance**_. Was being too _subtle_. 

But he supposed that might make sense in this particular case: Keith wasn't just some random attractive person he happened to stumble upon and decided to give flirting a go cause what the hell, we might all die tomorrow. Before the "realizing the attraction" part, there was a "I can be just as good as you and I'll prove it" part, then the "god, you're irritating", followed by the "wait, you're actually really cute". All of those resulted in what can only be perceived as feelings, which came with the uncertainty of whether or not there would be reciprocity. That means Lance cant just blurt out cheesy one-liners, because it might scare Keith away - and that's the last thing he'd want to do. 

Keith stopped at a tall door and let go of Lance's hand to push the button to open it, revealing a wide and empty circular room. 

"This is Allura's... mind palace thingy." Lance pointed out. "The room that shows her Altea." 

"Yeah." Keith noticed Lance was hesitating at the door, as if they were invading Allura's personal space. "It's okay, she's let me in here before. I was really stressed the other day and well, she saw me breaking the simulator robot to bits during practice, so she brought me here to calm down. She showed me how to use it." 

He walked in and up to a panel on the wall right next to the door and typed a couple of settings, then a silhouette of a hand appeared on the screen. Keith looked at Lance, raising his eyebrows and tilting his head to point at the panel. Lance approached it reluctantly, and placed his right hand on the silhouette. 

"Okay, now close your eyes." Keith said, a bit too close. "And think about where you want to be. It's simple enough."  
Lance tried to focus as well as he could, and it wasn't hard at all; he thought of it so often, dreamed of it so fondly, he didn't think he'd be surprised when he opened his eyes. However, it was more real than he'd expected.

It took him a second to adjust to the light, and soon his eyes focused on Keith, whose head was neatly framed by a passionately Orange sunset. 'fuck' was the only word he could think, struck by how gorgeous the boy in front of him was. 

Lance turned to look around and had his breath interrupted and taken away by the sight of a vast blue sea on Varadero beach. There was an immense open space all around them, divided half and half between white sand and deep blue ocean, with an orange sky above. They were few feet away from the shore, but Lance couldn't bring himself to walk up to it just yet; he was taking it in. 

"I know it's not perfect." Keith said, looking at the sunset. "For starters, I've never been to the beach but I'm pretty sure it smells more like sea salt and less like a sterilized metal room. The simulator doesn't do scents. Also, it's programmed only for sceneries, so it won't be able to show you any-" 

But Lance had hugged him tight and he had frozen. 

"People." Keith completed with wide eyes, starting to hug back, almost cautiously. 

"Thanks." Lance murmured in a low voice, partially against Keith's neck. 

That was enough to send chills throughout the whole of Keith's body, relaxing his muscles and allowing him to bury himself in the hug. He rested his head on Lance's shoulder, in a way he was almost facing the side of his neck, and soft brown hair brushed against his cheek. Keith breathed in and melted to the smell of Lance's skin and the warmth of the body pressed gently to his own, closing his eyes and forgetting completely where he was. Screw the simulator, a hug from Lance had just been able to take him a thousand miles away to a place he didn't even know he wanted to go to, and now didn't want to leave. 

And, in that moment, it hit him. What Keith felt wasn't just some crush anymore. It had definitely crossed the line into deeper territory, something that could no longer be easily ignored. Until then, he had managed to brush the feelings off, whenever he caught himself staring at Lance during practice or thinking too much about him when he wasn't in the room. But now? With their bodies this close, Keith was getting drunk from the warmth radiating from Lance's skin.

"Keith." Lance whispered.

"Yeah?" 

"Take off your shoes." 

"What." Keith grunted, opening his eyes and snapping out of his trance. 

Lance quickly let go of the hug, starting to clumsily but efficiently unlace his own shoes, throwing them to the side, followed by his socks. His excited smile widened when his bare feet finally touched the fresh sand, and he looked at Keith, encouraging him to do the same, before walking towards the water. 

Keith kneeled down and calmly untied his shoes and folded up the hemline of his pants, still a bit foggy from the hug. When he got up again, he saw Lance facing the sunset, standing in the sea with the water up to his ankles and his arms wide open. 

Keith walked until he was standing beside him, and saw that Lance was laughing quietly for no particular reason, his chest fluttering with shaky breaths, just out of pure overflowing happiness. His joy was so beautiful. After a moment, Keith reminded himself not to stare and turned his gaze at the tiny waves crashing softly on his feet. 

"So, where did you think of?" Lance asked, breaking the silence. "When you came here to relax, I mean. Did you think of home too?" 

"Not really." he answered, not looking Lance in the eye. "If I’m being honest, this - you guys, the palace - is as close to home as it's ever gotten for me." 

Keith could tell that Lance was looking at him more attentively now, and he started to imagine the usual "oh no, an orphan" face he'd seen time and again throughout his life, but when he looked at Lance the boy seemed... flattered. Keith understood the direction he was about to take the conversation on, and really appreciated it; they were having a good time, they were happy, and Lance intended to keep it that way, at the same time avoiding the pity he knew Keith didn't want or need. 

"Well, I'm honoured!" he smiled, with a hand to his chest. "I mean yes, I know our cordiality and my general warm and welcoming personality are an essential part of any home, but only now I see how struck you were by all of my clearly endearing qualities! I was actually starting to think you didn't like the gang at all, you're always so grumpy-"

"Shut up." Keith laughed, pushing Lance with one arm. "I just tend to focus a lot on the job; of course I like you." 

The moment the words came out of his mouth, he mentally face palmed himself. _Why_ does the English language only has one word for both the singular and plural form of the second person pronoun? Who the fuck thought that would be a good idea? 

"Right back atcha." Lance smiled, his blushing hid by the already red light of the sunset. He took a few steps back and sat on the sand, still close to the shore, and sighed lovingly. "Isn't it amazing? God, I wish we were really here. I'm guessing the simulator wouldn't keep my body from falling if I tried to swim, huh?" 

"I wouldn't count on it." Keith advised, lifting his submerged foot to test a theory - even though it felt like water on his skin, there was no upthrust; his foot felt just as heavy under water as it did out of it. He began kicking water around lightly, sinking his feet deeper in the damp sand, wiggling his toes to let the tiny grains travel through, testing the sensorial depth of the simulator. Allura had explained to him that the projection would only feel as real as the memories it was given; and Lance's memories of this place seemed to be very much alive in his mind, and very detailed. 

Lance was smiling at how adorable Keith looked, stomping around the water like that, with a concentrated expression. That same boy was scary good on practice, merciless on the battlefield, had a gun for a mouth in arguments, and yet had managed to spend three hours straight talking about the same episode of The X Files. 

It made Lance think how deep in this mess he was, in this wreck of feelings for someone he spent the entire day around, which made everything harder. Lance wanted to tell him so bad, wanted to shout it out every time they had an argument, he wanted to make a move and kiss the obliviousness right out of his stupid face. 

But he had already decided his plan: he would drop one subtle hint at a time until he could be sure of whether or not Keith liked him back; and if he pulled away at any moment whatsoever, Lance would back out for good and try his best to move the fuck on - they did have to save the universe after all, and he wasn't about to let his personal feelings ruin their chances of forming voltron. He took a deep breath to get himself together, then called for Keith.

"Come here, I wanna show you something." When Keith had sat down next to him on the sand, Lance opened his hand to reveal a beautifully detailed seashell, one of the elegant swirly ones, with tiny spikes and gold-brown stains. 

"I found it on the day before I moved to the academy. Took it there with me, actually; it would still be sitting on my dresser if they hadn't cleared our dorms a while after we disappeared. At least I assume that's what they did." Lance said as Keith took the shell from his hand with extreme care, taking a closer look at it. "I would give it to you, but it's not technically here, so." 

"You would give me a seashell?" Keith asked, looking slightly confused at Lance. It seemed awfully like one of those tokens of affection a person would give to someone they're interested in, but Keith didn't want any false hope. If Lance liked him that way, wouldn't he have blatantly hit on him like he does with every attractive person he meets? Little did he know that Lance was currently giving it all he had not to say "of course I would, I'm not shellfish" and ruin the mood. 

"Yeah, I mean - you said you'd never been to the beach before. I've got like, four boxes full of shells back home." 

"It's pretty." Keith sighed. Only then Lance realized how close they had been sitting to each other, because Keith's head was now resting on his shoulder. "I wish we were really here too." 

They spent some time like that, leaning against the other's side, being careful not to breathe too deep and disrupt the balance, and break the moment. Keith asked himself over and over if this was okay, if he hadn't crossed any lines, and Lance thought to himself over and over how overwhelmingly happy he was, sitting on Varadero beach with that boy so close to him. No distance between each other, only between them and rest of the universe. It didn't feel like they were still in the castle, like they had just been through hell, lost people, nearly died. It felt like a sweet hallucination had taken them far away to somewhere safe and warm; and, in a way, that's pretty much what it was. 

They watched the waves for a while, listening to them crash peacefully on the soft sand. Soon Keith relaxed more, realizing there was nothing to fear, because Lance hadn't pulled away - _he had leaned back_. What that meant, his head was only starting to put together. 

But relaxing got Keith very aware of his bruises again, reminding him of his beaten up body that had yet to spend some well deserved time in a healing pod. He shifted positions a bit and let out a faint grunt when he felt something - please don't let that be a fractured rib - puncture the side of his abdomen. He leaned forward and apart from Lance and placed a hand on the sore spot, trying to tell the damage. 

"Are you okay?" Lance asked, worryingly trying to meet his eyes.

"Yeah, I just- I just need some time in a healing pod. It's nothing serious." 

"Oh, alright. I'll take you there." Lance took Keith's arm and offered support for him to pull himself up, help that was promptly accepted. Once he was standing, however, Keith let go of Lance's arm and took a step back to show him that he was fine. 

"No, you should stay; you just got here. Spend some more time on the beach, I know you've missed it. I can walk on my own." 

"Well, I don't want you to. Besides, I shouldn't get too attached to this place; it will mess with my head." Lance argued, making a brief cuckoo hand gesture with wide eyes. "I can come back here whenever the old home sickness strikes again, but I gotta stay grounded. Kinda. Considering we're in space." 

"Alright." Keith smirked, and his heart began to pound on his chest when a thought came to mind. A clearly crazy, ridiculous thought, but Keith didn't always analyse things before acting on them, and that could be a good thing sometimes. 

"Here." Keith opened and held out his hand as if to return the small seashell he had been holding, and Lanced reached for it with a confused look on his face. 

"Uh, you really don't have to give it back; especially since it's not even r-" 

But the sentence was never finished, because Keith had taken Lance's hand, pulled him closer and kissed him, his other hand now holding the back of Lance's neck.  
It all happened so fast, the boy had no time to process; the kiss took over his thoughts in less than a heartbeat, and his mind turned into an overflowing mess that could only be translated as a swarm of exclamation marks. He would later think back a million times to that fraction of a second, when he felt himself being pulled and he saw Keith close his eyes and tilt his head and reach for his nape. In that tiny little slice of time, Lance was filled with such a huge amount of overwhelming anticipation that couldn't even be indulged in, because before he knew, their lips were touching, and he'd taken that last metaphorical step before falling off the cliff and having gravity ignore his insides. 

Lance's lips tasted bittersweet and fit perfectly on Keith's. In that moment he wished he didn't have his gloves on, he wished he could run his fingers freely through Lance's hair and hold his hand without anything between them. It all felt like an adrenaline packed dream - hazy, intense, insanely surreal; except it was actually happening. It was soft and gentle and, very soon, over. 

Lance hadn't even had a chance to kiss back when Keith pulled away just a few inches, their chests still touching. His eyes stayed close for a moment, then slowly opened to gaze at Lance's lips, then up to meet his eyes. He looked a bit uncertain, expectant, and pretty. So freaking pretty. Lance had his eyebrows so high on his forehead they would have floated away if they weren't attached to his face. Keith would have been alarmed if not for the dumb smile that soon flourished on Lance's lips, right before he slid his hand to Keith's waist and leaned in to return the kiss. 

It was steadier and more confident now; Lance was pulling him firmly by the waist and Keith had wrapped his arms around his neck, breathing in as much of Lance as his lungs could bare, ignoring the puncturing pain on his side. 

They were both smiling when they pulled apart, foreheads touching, arms still tangled in a warm hug. 

"You liiiike me." Lance teased, his usual smug face now blatantly flustered. 

"Yeah no shit." Keith mumbled, burying his face on Lance's neck, as the taller boy giggled and placed a hand on the back of Keith's head to play with his hair. Just as soft as he dreamed it would be. 

"You like me too." Keith murmured, his lips brushing against Lance's neck, sending a shiver down his spine. 

"True." Lance smiled. 

Keith had no idea what he did to him. Lance knew what he was doing when he made a move, he knew what reaction he was going for, but Keith? The guy just shot longing looks, sighed heart filled breaths, and whispered husky words like he wasn't doing anything whatsoever. How dare he. 

Lance kissed the top of Keith's head before pulling away from the hug just enough so they were standing side by side, Lance holding onto Keith's waist to offer support as much as to just keep his hands on him. 

"We should get going to the infirmary." He said, under a small groan of protest from Keith. "Fear not; my amazingly strong arms will be there to catch you when you get out." 

"You're the one that keeps fainting, Lance." 

"Just because I'm always being an awesome hero who risks his life for the sake of his team and the future of the universe!" 

"Yeah I could actually deal with less of you trying to get yourself killed." 

"I'll take that as a compliment." Lance smiled as they walked away from the shore. The sun had almost set now, and the sky was painted of a deep blue. 

"Hey ask me again if I would give you a seashell."

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old fic of mine I found on my laptop - I had posted and deleted it years ago, but after reading it again now it still warms my heart so I decided to put it out there again <3


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